“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” – Leviticus 18:22
For generations, these words from the Book of Leviticus have served as a cornerstone of homophobic rhetoric, weaponized to justify the oppression of queer identity. In his striking feature debut, writer-director Adrian Chiarella anchors his narrative entirely within the terror of this dogma.
Leviticus unfurls as a deeply religious and uncomfortably intimate glimpse into a provincial town in southern Australia. Salvation and violation are violently blurred into a unique kind of dread, a wide-open, sun-bleached isolation where prejudice does not just fester; it suffocates, consumes, and kills.
As vast as it is void
Wide, empty spaces dominate the panoramic cinematography, threatening to swallow the characters whole. Every sweeping frame of the Australian landscape operates with an ironic duality, highlighting the beauty of the terrain while ensuring the central couple feels microscopic, exposed, and completely isolated. The camera deepens this visual alienation by rarely allowing us to see the faces of the surrounding townsfolk, obscuring the community into an amalgamation of faceless, looming figures.
Complementing this oppressive visual language is a barren and deeply unsettling soundtrack. Traditional music rarely punctuates the scenes in the film. Instead, it leans heavily on an industrial, hollow sound that reflects the town’s spiritual desolation. The score is stripped to its skeletal components, leaving behind only a haunting orchestra of synthesized winds and reverberating synths. Every frame is trapped beneath this agonizingly heavy silence, almost as if the physical environment itself conspires to isolate the main characters.
Audiences become invariably immersed within the cold world of Leviticus, helplessly dragged along the dark spiral of the thriller. The visual hostility only subsides at the film’s denouement, trading the town’s icy loneliness for the warm, comforting tones of tomorrow. The scene is not lit by the rising sun, but by renewed hope and desire of its main leads.
I was never scared of this
Despite its imagery of horror, Leviticus is kindled by the incandescent longing between Naim and Ryan. Tucked within illicit affairs, the film’s greatest pulse unravels a secret language of love, becoming both refuge and reckoning. Simply being together is an act of outward defiance.
But such tenderness can only be fleeting. As Naim and Ryan surrender to their desires, Leviticus summons a crueler consequence: an entity that assumes the form of the person they love most. A compelling metaphor for homophobia and guilt, their intimacy becomes inseparable from terror as their memories transform into weapons. With their relationship deepening, the entity grows into a physical manifestation of fear.
These stifling relationships are what give Leviticus its cathartic weight. Ryan’s bond with Hunter burns in fatal combustion through thrown stones and desperate affection. In contrast, Naim and Ryan’s love transcends lustful fantasies; they find comfort in each other’s existence, with no demand for hurt.
But it is Naim’s strained relationship with his mother, Arlene, that catalyzes the collapse of a bond beyond salvation. Her passivity toward Naim’s situation curdles with cruelty until she outright refuses the very son she has made him out to be, representing the duplicity of a congregation that wounds others with the supposed antidote of religion.
Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen embody these subtle visceralities through performances that feel lived-in. Bird carries Naim with absolute restraint, eyes glistening to reveal the inner motions of a boy caught between guilt and salvation. Clausen imbues Ryan with unnerving uncertainty, blurring the lines of whether they are witnessing the real Ryan or the entity. Alongside the pensiveness of Mia Wasikowska’s Arlene, the three create a claustrophobic atmosphere in which each moment of tension awaits with bated breath.
Despite its haunted musings, Leviticus stumbles under its regional mystique. The film’s exposition feels uneven, particularly with Naim and Ryan’s relationship arriving too swiftly to fully earn the emotional weight of later acts. Naim’s consequential outing of Ryan receives little resolution, leaving the revelation to linger in silence and loosening the film’s finality once its spells of horror have wilted away. However, while it leaves few wounds uncleaned, its subtle aches have cemented its place among the more affecting queer narratives of recent memory.
Shackled to a simulated sanctorum
The bedrock of Leviticus is rich in biblical symbolism. Early on, Naim and Ryan stumble upon a snake struggling to swallow a frog. Biblically, frogs are tied to uncleanliness, snakes to temptation—an omen that awaits them. The town reduces them to nothing more than classroom frogs: pinned, dissected, and desecrated. And like those wretched creatures, they bring a plague to the town, believing that even their tenderest kiss tastes no sweeter than their own pathogenic bile. They quietly resign themselves to this cruelty.
The church’s condemnation is disguised as merciful rites, pushing Ryan to atone and repress his desire, in fear of damnation. This violation parallels real-life scriptural vilification embedded in conversion therapy and homophobic abuse. Here, compliance is the only means of survival and hiding becomes routine—in warehouses, fields, and the back seats of buses—without realizing that every moment in secret fattens itself for a snake waiting to devour them.
Every tender gesture between Naim and Ryan is a heightened moment of anxiety. The brutal horror starts with a lighter, a ceremonial flame built to defile and to reform, curse and cure. Naim later uses this flame to fight the evil—suggesting that what started the terror might be its only conclusion.
Ultimately, Leviticus lands hardest for queer viewers, especially those who arrived at the same conclusion as Naim and Ryan: that their town was never going to make room for them. No amount of sacrificial suffering would ever sanctify their sins.
Beyond the screen, several of Leviticus’ conversations and moments of silence and derision are still echoed everywhere. Although the monster is very much fictional, the swallowing cinematography, coupled with a haunting soundtrack, simulates the daunting and isolating reality for queer individuals who, like Naim and Ryan, choose to be silent, to be in secret, or to flee in search of acceptance. Leviticus effectively locates the true horror of this societal discourse, asking viewers to sympathize with those who grew up asking what would make them good enough for being different, not realizing the question itself is wrong.
Rating: 3.5/4.0
